Surtees was the son of a south-London motorcycle dealer. His father Jack was an accomplished grasstrack competitor and sidecar racer, and young John had his first professional outing at the age of fourteen as a sidecar passenger — a result subsequently voided when officials discovered his age. He began working as an apprentice at the Vincent motorcycle factory at sixteen, and first gained wider prominence in 1951 when he gave Norton star Geoff Duke a strong challenge in an ACU race at Thruxton.
Norton race chief Joe Craig gave Surtees factory machinery in 1955, and he ended the season by beating the reigning world champion Duke at both Silverstone and Brands Hatch. He then accepted an offer from the MV Agusta factory team, where he was nicknamed figlio del vento — son of the wind. In 1956 he won the 500cc world championship, MV Agusta's first in the senior class. When Gilera and Moto Guzzi withdrew from Grand Prix racing after 1957, Surtees and MV Agusta went on to dominate the two larger displacement classes. Between 1958 and 1960 he won 32 of 39 races and became the first man to win the Senior TT at the Isle of Man three successive years. His seven world titles comprised four in the premier 500cc class and three in the 350cc class.
In 1960, at the age of 26, Surtees switched to car racing full-time, making his Formula One debut at Silverstone for Team Lotus. He made an immediate impact, finishing second in only his second championship race at the 1960 British Grand Prix and taking pole position at his third, the 1960 Portuguese Grand Prix. After seasons with the Yeoman Credit Racing Team and the Bowmaker Racing Team, he moved to Scuderia Ferrari in 1963.
At Ferrari, Surtees won the 1964 Formula One World Drivers' Championship, beating Graham Hill to the title. The following year ended prematurely: on 25 September 1965 at Mosport Park in Canada, a front upright casting broke during practice in a Lola T70 sports car, resulting in a life-threatening accident that left him with serious injuries requiring extensive surgical treatment.
The 1966 season brought the introduction of new three-litre engines to Formula One. Surtees won the Belgian Grand Prix for Ferrari in heavy rain after surviving a chaotic first lap. However, his relationship with the team fractured at Le Mans over a dispute about driver pairings for the 24-hour race: team manager Eugenio Dragoni told Surtees he was not fully fit following his 1965 injuries, while Surtees believed the decision was made to accommodate Gianni Agnelli's preference for his nephew Ludovico Scarfiotti. Surtees immediately quit Ferrari. The decision likely cost both parties the 1966 Formula One championship; Ferrari finished second in the Constructors' standings and Surtees finished second in the Drivers' standings, now driving for Cooper-Maserati. He won the final race of the season in Mexico for Cooper.
Also in 1966, Surtees competed in the inaugural Can-Am season in a Lola T70, winning three of six races to take the championship.
In December 1966 he signed for Honda. After promising early results, Honda introduced the revised RA300 for the Italian Grand Prix, and Surtees slipstreamed Jack Brabham across the finish line to win by 0.2 seconds — Honda's second ever Formula One victory.
Surtees retired from competitive driving in 1972 and the Surtees Racing Organisation competed as a constructor in Formula One, Formula 2, and Formula 5000 from 1970 to 1978. The team's greatest success came in 1972 when Mike Hailwood won the European Formula 2 Championship.
Away from the track, Surtees ran a motorcycle shop in West Wickham and a Honda dealership in Edenbridge during the 1970s. He chaired A1 Team Great Britain in the A1 Grand Prix series from 2005 to 2007. In 2010, following the death of his son Henry in a Formula 2 race at Brands Hatch in 2009, Surtees founded the Henry Surtees Foundation to assist victims of accidental brain injuries and promote safety in motorsport.
Surtees received an MBE, was elevated to OBE in 2008, and appointed CBE in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to motorsport. He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1996, received the FIM's Grand Prix Legends honour in 2003, and was awarded the 2012 Segrave Trophy for his unique achievement of world championships on two and four wheels. He died of respiratory failure on 10 March 2017 at St George's Hospital in London at the age of 83.